4 comments:

Andrew Sullivan notes Obama "will have achieved something that no previous Democrat had managed: universal health insurance. This will be spun away by some. And maybe the infuriated left-liberals and the angry right-oppositionists will get some temporary respite from that. But guess what? He did it. It was as grueling a victory as the one in the primaries, and took even longer. But it was a victory, a substantive, enduring legislative victory the like of which no president has achieved since Reagan."

And I would say since LBJ, not Reagan.

I think it was much preferable to actually pass a real health care bill than to push for something much more progressive that would have simply been filibustered to death. And as Ezra Klein has pointed out, once the framework is in place, it will be much easier to "fix" and improve over time just like with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Mike, your point is taken, and I come down, begrudgingly, on the side of JustPassTheDamBillAlready. But I think Greenwald's concerns about corporatism are spot-on, and there's no doubt in my mind that it was a marked failure of leadership on Obama's part that we failed to get a much better bill.

But just in case any little trolls out there read my comment above start snickering about "Buyer's Remorse" (yeah, like anything I say will stop them) it is worth pointing out that disappointment in Obama will never translate into any kind of regret for the votes I cast. I still think Obama was the better choice over Clinton, and of course he was better than McCain. And those were the choices we had. We need to work harder to elect more and better Democrats. Period.